H.E. Bates Companion

London: Michael Joseph, 1963; New York: Farrar, Straus & Company, 1964. Dedication: "This book is dedicated to Stephen, Jeremy, Andrew, Beverley and Emma" (Bates's grandchildren). The title is taken from Robert Browning's "Home Thoughts from Abroad."

This fourth novel in the Larkin family sequence features a variety of characters and incidents, including a stuffy Captain who is put in his place by the lovely Angela Snow and Jasmine Brown, an owner of a country fair who encounters young hoodlums, and a young minister pursued by the fourteen-year-old Primrose Larkin. Madame Dupont, owner of the hotel of the second novel, crosses the ocean only to discover that "Milord" Larkin is only a dealer in junk. As in the previous novels in the sequence, this ends in a major event (the christening of no fewer than eight Larkins) and celebration, at which the Reverend Candy surprises all by dispatching the hoodlums with techniques learned as a minister in the East End of London.

The New Statesman found it "nauseating" and the Times Literary Supplement says "the same formula is once again repeated...in the dreary Larkin saga."

Reviews:
New Statesman (July 19, 1963, p. 85, Christopher Ricks, attached)
Times (July 18, 1963, p. 13, attached)
Times Literary Supplement (August 16, 1963, p. 627, attached)